Where the Crawdads Sing

“A man doesn't set up a palmetto lean-to in a bog unless he's on the run from somebody or at the end of his own road.”

Well friends, I finished this book. This has been on my to-read list almost since it came out, but I always found reasons to put it off. That didn't stop so many people from telling me I should/need to read it, but that just sort of made me dig my heels in more. It had the dreaded “romance” tag on Goodreads, and those are always hit or miss with me, and that was a good enough reason to keep putting this off. Then my book club decided to read it this month and I ran out of good reasons to put it off, so I ripped the Band-Aid off and finished this in a few days.

I won't bother with a full summary, since there's literally thousands of reviews of this book that all cover the same ground. Suffice it to say that the first half of the book is Shy Marsh Girl in a Modern (for the time period) World, and the second half of the book is Shy Marsh Girl in a Mediocre Courtroom Drama.

If the book had been entirely composed of what was essentially the first half of the book, my rating would've been 4 stars at least. While it definitely had a slow start, I was drawn into how comfortable the writing was and how beautiful the marsh seemed. Kya had a rapport with nature that I found compelling to read about. Her brushes with the rest of the world around her usually went poorly, but she always seemed to rise above whatever hand she was dealt and come out the other side stronger and more skilled.

The first half of the book is told from a dual timeline perspective, and it is when these two periods converge (when Kya's story catches up to the secondary story being slowly revealed during her marsh life) that the book loses me. While I'm sure there's books where courtroom drama is compelling, this one didn't feel like one of those. The scenes felt flat, devoid of the charm and beauty of the first part of the book, and really felt so tonally different that it took me right out of the story. I finished the book, but ultimately left it feeling unsatisfied and wishing I had more time with Kya's story at the end, rather than a sudden and abrupt headlong rush and conclusion.

While it's clear there's many (manymanymanymany) people here who enjoyed it cover to cover, my enjoyment ended at the courtroom intrusion. I'm glad I finally struck this one from my to-read list, I'm glad I read it with friends, but I don't think I'll ever revisit it.